Sales, Product, or Operations Entrepreneur

Everyone loves to try and categorize the most common types of entrepreneurs. I’d like to throw my hat in the ring. Over the past 10 years I’ve found that there are three main types of entrepreneurs:

• Sales – spends a good deal of time focused on selling, doing deals, and anything else related to bringing in new business
• Product – enjoys the product management, strategy, and vision aspect of the business (I’m personally in this camp)
• Operations – loves the organization aspect of growing a business, the metrics, KPIs, and general execution

There’s no right or wrong answer and you can probably think of famous examples for each category (e.g. Mark Benioff, Steve Jobs, and Jack Welch). My recommendation is maximize your talents by focusing on what you’re good at and understand that it is common to excel in one or two areas.

What else? Do you agree with these three categories for entrepreneurs?